Hide Me Among the Graves (52 page)

Gabriel's balding head could be dimly seen above the blankets, and he was breathing audibly enough for Swinburne to be confident that he was in fact asleep. Swinburne stole forward silently, peering about for Gabriel's trousers or cloak so that he could rifle the pockets.

FATHER CYPRIAN LOOKED UP
from his Book of Common Prayer and said, in a stern voice that echoed among the beams of the high ceiling, “I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.”

Crawford couldn't remember if his wedding to Veronica twenty-five years ago had included this order; possibly Father Cyprian had added it specially after having dispensed with the three-week announcement of the banns.

Crawford hoped Trelawny wouldn't do anything irresponsible; but the old man made no sound.

After what Crawford thought was a rudely prolonged pause, the priest went on, “John, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” said Crawford strongly.

The priest turned to McKee. “Adelaide, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

Crawford was reassured to hear happy firmness in McKee's voice when she answered, “I will.”

The priest smiled. “And,” he went on, “who giveth this woman to be married to this man?”

Peripherally, Crawford saw Trelawny take McKee's arm and step forward.

“Take her from the hand of an unrepentant sinner,” Trelawny whispered to Crawford.

The priest cocked an eyebrow at the old man, and Crawford restrained himself from rolling his eyes. Shut
up,
he thought intensely.

It occurred to him that Trelawny's statement was just reflexive bravado at finding himself on this rainy morning participating in a ritual in a Christian church; but he had mentioned sending his daughter and grandchildren to America, and seven years ago, in the cassowary cage at the London Zoo, he had said,
I've been
making amends
for things I did in Greece, in Euboea and on Mount Parnassus, forty years ago.

And he baptized all the Mud Larks.

I don't believe, thought Crawford, that you're as unrepentant as you'd like us all to suppose, old man.

SWINBURNE FINALLY SAW GABRIEL'S
trousers crumpled in the shadows by the foot of the bed—but as he began to crouch and reach for them, he saw the glass of water on the bedside table.

Something like a short black cigar was sunk in it.

He straightened very slowly, willing his knees not to pop, and took another long step forward and reached out with two fingers. The water was cold and faintly caustic, but he pinched the top of the thing—it did appear to be made of stone—and lifted it out of the glass.

And immediately he knew he had found the described statue, for he felt an alien eagerness and desperation in his mind.

Drops of water fell from it back into the glass with a sound like lightly plucked violin strings, and Swinburne closed his fist around the thing.

As carefully as he had made his way into the room, Swinburne began retracing his steps across the carpet. Now that he had hold of the thing, he was sweating with fear that Gabriel might awaken and take it away from him; but he was able to slide out through the doorway silently, and he turned and hurried down the stairs.

CRAWFORD TOOK HIS MOTHER'S
ring out of his waistcoat pocket and slid it onto the fourth finger of McKee's left hand, and then, prompted by the priest, he said, “With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Trelawny yawned audibly, but when Crawford glanced at him, the old man looked away, as if interested in the framed stations of the cross paintings mounted high on the wall.

The priest was intoning some long prayer involving Isaac and Rebecca now, but Crawford was remembering Christina Rossetti saying that Trelawny had apparently “stopped in a box of mirrors” the woman he had met by moonlight in the Roman ruins of Watling Street years ago, and whom he had traveled with ever since.

Were the words of the wedding affecting him? Perhaps the love of those creatures for their victims, Crawford thought, is not always entirely unrequited.

The priest finished the prayer with “through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and Crawford said “Amen” along with McKee and the priest and Christina in a pew behind them.

Father Cyprian now took Crawford's right hand and put McKee's right hand into it; she laced her warm fingers through his.

“Those whom God hath joined together,” said Father Cyprian, “let no man put asunder. Forasmuch as John and Adelaide have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth, each to the other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving a ring, and by joining of hands; I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Crawford, McKee, Johanna, and Christina all echoed, “Amen.”

“That's it,” said Father Cyprian, closing his book with a snap. “Since this is a somewhat rushed ceremony, I put the parish record book and the marriage certificate in the first pew.”

Crawford and McKee both signed the book, and Trelawny and Christina signed as witnesses, and when Crawford tucked the folded certificate into his waistcoat pocket, he remembered to give the priest fourteen shillings.

“Thank you,” said Father Cyprian, smiling crookedly. “Bless yourselves with holy water on the way out,” he advised, stepping back. “It might discourage your dead boy.”

Trelawny snorted. “I'll bless
him,
with a silver bullet.” He turned to the others. “Where do you go from here?”

“Well,” said Christina a bit stiffly,
“I'm
going to go to my brother's house, to make sure the statue is destroyed. Thank you, uh, Reverend!” she added, speaking past him.

The four of them had begun walking down the aisle toward the doors, but Trelawny stopped and caught Christina's shoulder. “You people
got
it? The Polidori?”

“Yes,” said Christina, frowning as she glanced at his hand. “My brother retrieved it last night. And—”

“And you want to
make sure
it's destroyed? It might not be?”

“Well, he … as Adelaide noted, my brother does sleep late…”

Trelawny started for the doors again, moving faster now but still clutching Christina's shoulder.

“Where is it?” he barked as they stepped into the puddled vestibule. “Now?”

Everyone except Trelawny was snatching up coats and hats and umbrellas.

“At—at my brother's house. Really, Mr. Trelawny, I must ask you to—”

Trelawny pushed one of the doors open and pulled Christina out into the cold alley air, with Crawford and McKee and Johanna following, tugging at hats and coat sleeves.

“Are there other people at that house?”

Stray drops of rain were finding their way down between the close-set buildings, and Christina blinked and tried to open her umbrella. “My brother William slept there last night—and Algernon Swinburne may be there, he often is—”

“Swinburne!” The name was an obscenity when Trelawny spat it out. “Does
he
know about this, about the statue?” Trelawny was marching them up the cobbles of Bozier's Court toward the gray daylight of Oxford Street.

“No, I—” Christina hesitated. “Yes, I think he may. He was eavesdropping—”

“We're all going to that house right now,” Trelawny pronounced, stepping right out into the street with Christina stumbling along beside him. She still hadn't got her umbrella open, and the rain was coming down harder than before.

Trelawny flagged a passing clarence cab by practically blocking its way, and though the driver was making some protest about being engaged to pick up some other party, Trelawny released Christina to hop up beside the man and give him some money and say something to him, and the driver grimaced unhappily but nodded.

Trelawny glanced down, his eyes blazing above his white beard. “Where is your brother's house?”

“16 Ch-Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea!”

Trelawny relayed the address to the driver, then sprang down to the pavement, yelling, “In, in!”

Johanna was the first one to scramble into the cab, and she seemed to share Trelawny's sense of urgency—she reached out to grab her father's hand and tug on it until he was sitting beside her. Trelawny was the last to step up into the cab, pushing McKee and Christina ahead of him.

The cab surged ahead as he pulled the door closed and sat down next to Crawford. Already the interior of the cab was steamy, and Trelawny smelled of cigar smoke.

“Swinburne!” Trelawny exclaimed again. “He
needs
it, needs your damned uncle—he's been without a vampire patron for a week.”

“Swinburne?” exclaimed Christina. “He's one of—the victim of one of these—”

“You've read his poetry,” said Trelawny bitterly.

“I should have known,” she whispered.

“Assuredly you should have, if in fact you didn't.”

Christina was apparently too distracted to take offense. “He was one of… Boadicea's?”

“Of course. And I caught her just as you said, shortly before dawn last Saturday, poor old girl.”

“He wants,” said Christina, trying now to collapse her partly opened umbrella, “my uncle wants someone to rub the blood of one of Boadicea's victims onto his statue. Our mirror trick, though it didn't keep him down forever, did evidently damage him—and now he needs blood vivified by another of his kind—I—didn't catch why.”

“She infects the victim with her blueprint,” said Trelawny with a shrug. “I suppose the victim's blood could impose her blueprint on your uncle's fractured self—let him re-knit, like a shattered bone, according to its directions.”

Johanna leaned out from beside Crawford. “I'll kill myself,” she remarked, “before I'll let him have me again.”

“You shame me,” Christina said to her softly.

For several seconds no one spoke, as the cab rattled down Charing Cross Road toward the Strand.

“Congratulations, incidentally,” said Trelawny to Crawford, reaching over to shake his hand.

“For what?” asked Crawford absently, shaking the old man's hand as he stared at his daughter.

“You just got married,” put in McKee with a dry smile.

“Oh! Oh, yes, of course, thank you. I'm distracted by—”

Trelawny nodded and fished a flask from under his coat. “The pleasant times are always soon eclipsed.” He unscrewed the cap and waved it around at the company.

Christina was the first to take it, and she took a solid gulp.

To Crawford's alarm, McKee declined it but passed it to Johanna; and when his daughter handed it to him, it felt only about a third full. It proved to contain neat brandy, and he was careful not to drink all that was left before handing the flask back to Trelawny, but the old man took only a token sip before recapping it.

For perhaps a couple of minutes they were silent in the rattling, rocking cab, and then Christina remarked, “He's not restored yet; I'd feel it if he were. Perhaps Gabriel hid it effectively.”

Beside Crawford, Johanna nodded. “I'd feel it too, and I don't.”

For the rest of the ten-minute ride, none of them spoke—they all simply stared out the rain-streaked windows at the passing dark buildings on the right and the leaden river on the left as the cab shook its way through Westminster and Pimlico.

At last the cab squeaked to a halt in front of a closely barred wrought-iron fence, beyond which stood a three-story red-brick house with projecting bay windows on the first and second floors.

Trelawny was first out of the cab, and he shouted at the driver to wait for them.

As the rest of them disembarked from the cab, Christina was saying something about going in first alone, but her four companions hustled her through the gate and across the walkway and up the five steps to the front porch.

“We need to settle it as soon as possible, Diamonds,” said Trelawny, not unkindly, as he waved at the doorknob.

Christina lifted her handbag but tried the knob with her free hand, and the door proved to be unlocked.